Lexile+Information

This year the Virginia Department of Education is going to use the SOL Reading test to determine students’ Lexile levels and send that measure to parents along with the SOL scores.

OK, so what is a Lexile? The Lexile Framework was developed by the MetaMetrics Company as a scientific method of measuring reading ability and the difficulty of text readiblity. The scale runs from below 200L for beginning readers to over 1700L for advanced readers and materials.

So, where do the measures come from? Simply put, for text measures the Lexile score reflects two factors, word frequency and sentence length. MetaMetrics has a mathematical formula, featuring a 600 million word corpus, to determine text difficulty.

To determine a student's Lexile score there are several options. There are computerized tests, such as the Scholastic Reading Inventory, that will report a student's Lexile score using a Rasch model to analyze the answers to a comprehension test. This is similiar to the VDOE analysis of SOL Reading scores.

Informaly, teachers can also have a student read material at a given Lexile level and gauge comprehension. The Lexile score reflects a 75% comprehension rate. A student with a Lexile measure of 800 will comprehend 75% of a text with a measure of 800, using all the context clues and reading strategies previously taught.

This .pdf goes into greater detail. []

How do we use it? The Lexile people also recommend that we look at a range rather than a single level when usingLexile to choose or recommend books. The range is 50L above to 100L below the Lexile measure. MetaMetrics are the first to say, indeed insist, that a book's Lexile level is a only a measure of text difficulty. It is not an assessment of text quality or appropriateness of content. That is still best left to teachers, parents, and students.

Fortunately our library software allows for searching by Lexile levels. I’m not endorsing anyone do this, but if you want to get an idea of some other books that might fall in the range of something else, it’s useful. For instance, I know that XXX is level Q, if I look up XXX and find out the lexile level, I can then search a lexile range surrounding that to get more options for my readers.

Here are some links to charts, graphs and tables that attempt to link Lexile scores to other common measures of readability.

The Oregon Association of School Libraries provides this link: [|Reading Grade-Level Comparison Chart (.pdf)] courtesy of Steven Zimmerman of Harcourt. It provides a comparison by grade level of different book leveling systems including Lexiles, Fountas and Pinnell (Guided Reading), Basal, DRP (Degrees of Reading Power), Reading Recovery and DRA.

This [|chart] is from Perfection Learning, linking Guided Reading, Early Intervention Level, Developmental Reading Level, and Lexile measures.

Metametrics links, however cautiously, grade levels to Lexile measures [|here]. Suggested Viewing [|Virginia Department of Education Lexile Framework for Educators] (Be sure to watch the flash video, it's very well done.) VDOE Lexile [|Frequently Asked Questions] about Lexiles The [|Lexile Framework for Reading] website [|Lexile Book Search] [|Southern Utah University Reading Resources]

[|Search SHES online catalog by Lexile Level]